‘I look forward to it, my dear. Well, goodbye for now. It’s been lovely seeing you.’
‘Goodbye, Miss Beech, and thanks again. I really look forward to working with you.’ And she did.
When Faye got back to England, she phoned her father to relay the wonderful news to him. He sounded delighted for her, if a bit concerned that she would be moving so far away.
‘Terrific, Faye, but what about accommodation? Where are you going to stay?’
‘The most amazing place, Dad.’ By the time she had finished describing it to him, she got the impression he was definitely coming round to thinking that she had made the right decision.
Faye’s tour of the stables with Eddie Marshal had been mouth-watering. Whereas the chateau was traditional old French style, with a distinctly medieval flavour, the inside of the first-floor apartment in the equally old stable block had had the full interior designer treatment not that long ago, and had been brought bang up to date in the twenty-first century. From the steel and glass stairs to the recessed lighting, state of the art kitchen and huge flat screen television, it was a symphony of modern chic. It looked as though it had just come out of the pages of a style magazine and Faye failed to see why on earth Miss Beech reckoned it needed to be redecorated.
It was immaculate, with a bedroom for her that was twice the size of the room she had been renting since splitting up with Didier, and a separate, comfortable guest suite with its own bathroom, if she ever chose to have visitors. The place was fully furnished, and everything from the sleek sofas in the vaulted lounge, to the comfortable-looking beds, screamed class and expense. She had been open-mouthed by the end of the tour, but, even so, Eddie Marshal had managed to flabbergast her even more.
‘We’ll make sure it’s spruced up for you before you come back, Faye. Recently, we haven’t had many guests staying over. It must be a couple of years since the last visitor was here.’ He glanced at her with disarming nonchalance. ‘That was that rather nice American gentleman, Mr Clooney.’
Faye’s jaw dropped. ‘George Clooney slept here?’
‘Yes, and I seem to remember him saying how comfortable the bed was.’
It took some days before Faye managed to get over the thought that she was going to sleep in the same bed as George Clooney, albeit not at the same time. It would have been nice to tell her friends about this, and indeed about the identity of her new employer, but one of the conditions of employment had been to promise to keep Miss Beech’s identity secret for the duration of the contract, only telling close family, and that just meant her dad.
The next weeks rushed by.
Faye handed in her notice as soon as she got back and was surprised and rather flattered at the attempts by Miss Dawes to get her to stay, all of which she cheerfully refused. At school, she burned the midnight oil, determined to do the very best for the students under her tutelage. She gave notice to her landlord and then spent more time than she had imagined packing her things, taking stuff to the recycling centre, paying bills, and informing people of her forthcoming change of address from London to Provence.
Often, as the weeks went by, she would take time to reflect upon how this major change of direction would affect her life. The writing job sounded fascinating, Provence charming and, even better, she knew that this would help her further distance herself from Miss Dawes and, above all, from Didier. Things were definitely beginning to look up at long last.
As far as her friends at the school and elsewhere in London were concerned, she could only tell them that she was going to France, where she would be working for a very secretive person, and she was constantly being bombarded with guesses as to just who it might be. Interestingly, George Clooney was suggested more than once, but nobody thought to mention Anabelle Beech. The interrogation became particularly intense on the last day of term, but she managed to keep the secret, even after her colleagues had forced liberal quantities of Prosecco upon her in the pub after work.
The next day her dad arrived in his car to collect her and her belongings. Faye hadn’t wanted to bother him, as she knew he was always so very busy, but she had just got too much stuff. Together, they loaded all her worldly belongings and drove back to Salisbury and, as expected, he spent most of the journey warning her to be careful of everything from poisonous snakes to the white slave trade, and issuing advice about exercise and diet, and even recommendations about what clothes to take to France. She didn’t mind, having got used to his incessant worrying for her wellbeing all the way through her life, and she put up with it with a smile. Her smile broadened as they arrived back home.
Standing on the drive outside the house she found a smart little white Fiat 500 with the red and green stripes of the Italian flag running along its side. She had asked her dad to find her a car, as she knew she would need her own transport and he knew the sort of thing she liked. She nodded to herself in approval. As they got out of his car, her father handed her the keys. ‘This one’s only a year old and it’s had one careful lady driver – or at least that’s what the salesman told me.’
‘Thanks, Dad. It’s exactly what I wanted. How much was it? With the huge wad of money I’m being paid, I should be able to afford it.’
He wouldn’t hear of it. ‘You leave that to me and save your money, Faye. Who knows how expensive life in Provence is likely to be.’
Somehow, Faye felt pretty sure that there weren’t going to be too many opportunities to spend money in St-Jean-sur-Sarde. Still, some time to herself, the opportunity to catch up with a whole heap of reading, and her own personal cinema promised to ensure that she wouldn’t be bored.
***
She left Salisbury late on Sunday afternoon and drove down to Portsmouth in the surprisingly nippy little car. She took the overnight ferry and managed to sleep reasonably well before arriving in France in the early morning. Although she probably could have done the drive in one long day, her father had insisted she should break her journey and, by the time she pulled into the car park of a budget hotel beside the motorway that evening, she was feeling very tired. That night, as she lay in bed, listening to the incessant rumble of traffic, the dominant thought in her head was how good it felt to be setting off on another chapter of her life, knowing that upon her return, she would be making a completely fresh start.
Next day she got up at seven, and by early afternoon was already in Provence, the road curling steadily upwards past olive groves and vineyards. She drove through sleepy little villages, the shutters of the houses tightly closed against the heat of the sun, with no living creatures to be seen. She blessed the instinct that had made her father select a car with functioning air conditioning, because it was absolutely scorching outside.
Shortly before three, she found herself at the self-same spot where she had stopped to ask for directions. This time there was no sign of a tall man and a black Labrador, but she knew where she was going. By the time she reached the gates of the chateau, she was feeling very excited at the prospect of what lay ahead.
She stepped out into the suffocating heat and pressed the bell. As she was waiting, she spotted a camera mounted high to one side, pointing down at her. Security, in a place like this, was clearly paramount. She gave it a little smile and a wave and wondered if anybody was watching. No sooner had she done so, than the gates began to open, so she gave the camera another wave before getting back into the car.
She drove round to the stable yard at the back of the chateau and parked right outside her new apartment, vaguely conscious of barking coming from the house. As she climbed out of the car, she was almost floored by the arrival of a very boisterous Marlon, clearly delighted to see her